The veteran sailor son of a California gardener seen in a graphic video that was repeatedly beaten in the head by a customs and border patrol agent and persecuted at gunpoint is rejecting the government’s statements that his father attacked the agents with a weed trim.
The arrest of Narciso Barranco, 48, in Santa Ana, on Saturday has caught national attention, since videos that shows an agent who holds Barranco, who is undocumented, to the pavement with the knee on the shoulder blade, have been published. The agent repeatedly hits Barranco’s face and head while trying to pull his right arm behind his back to handcuff him, while other officers try to hold Barranco down.
The initial videos of the arrest have been counteracted with videos of the administration, which said that Barranco assaulted the officers with their weed trim.
The Department of National Security published a video on Tuesday, the second he has published, which shows Barranco swinging his weeds criminal while turning towards two immigration agents that follow him on a busy street with drawn weapons and point it out.
Dhs said in a statement on Monday that Barranco ran, then turned and “turned a weed workshop directly on the face of an agent. Then he fled at an intersection occupied and raised the Weed Wacker again to the agent.”
The son of Narciso, Alejandro Barranco, 25, a veteran sailor, told MSNBC on Tuesday that if he had treated a detainee in the same way while serving as Marine, “it would have been a war crime.”
“You see in the video where my father is running with the Weed Waller, there is a call agent that runs with his gun and points to a vehicle,” said Alejandro, 25. “At what point in our training do they teach us to hold our gun on the side? They are always both hands in the gun and your finger of the trigger.”
DHS told NBC News that their officers used the minimum amount of force and followed training in the use of the necessary minimum force. He said they prioritized public security and officers.
Alejandro said he asked his father, whom he had visited at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, about the accusations of assault.
“When he heard this, he was like, he was shocked, he was confused. Is it like, when?” Alejandro said. “It is the natural human movement, the natural human reaction. It is paid pepper before, as seconds before that. He said he never intended to hurt anyone; he never intended to hit anyone. It is just a natural movement.”
Alejandro said in a NBC news interview that he did not agree with the DHS statement that the officers used a minimal and appropriate force.
“It was the maximum, just before using the lethal force, because they were hitting their heads, four more than 200 boys, more than 200 most pound agents or whatever they were, surpassing a type of 5 feet 7 inches and 150 pounds without any weapon, so I don’t think it was the minimum, and I don’t think they have handled it professionally,” he said.
The agents in the video are masked. Alejandro said that his father, who has lived in the United States for decades, most likely did not know who the agents were when they tried to take it, scared and runs. He said he believes that the agents were racially outlining his father when they tried to take him.
Alejandro has been concerned about the conditions in the detention center where his father is celebrated. He said that when he saw him in the installation on Tuesday, his father wore the same clothes as when he was arrested, that he had not been able to wash his face or shower, that he had blood in his shirt and that his eyes were burning. Alejandro said his father told him that he is being held in a cage with at least another 70 people, with a bathroom and without privacy, and that he has received water “maybe once a day” and “very, very little food.”
“I am disconsolate,” said Alejandro, whose two younger brothers are active duty marines. “I love my parents. I love the community. I feel betrayed.”
President Donald Trump deployed hundreds of Marines in Los Angeles, as well as the members of the National Guard, during the protests this month against the administration’s immigration policies, including some that became violent. Similar to another Marine who spoke with NBC News, Alejandro said she has feelings found about the deployment of Marines when many are children of immigrants like him.
“I know they are taking orders and simply doing their job … I know that some of them are probably confused or feel injured, too, because I am quite sure that many of their family members are also undocumented,” he said.
The families and spouses of the service members can request green cards or be “on probation” in the United States, giving them labor authorization. Alejandro said that the family was trying to do that for his father and will continue with the paperwork while trying to free him from arrest.
NBC News reported on Sunday that another veteran sailor is fighting against the arrest of his wife and mother of his two young children, one of them a 3 -month -old baby. She was arrested when she appeared for a green card appointment in an exceptional extraction order.
Alejandro said it was for his father that he and his brothers joined the Marines.
“My dad and my mother have always taught us to respect this country, to be grateful for this country and to appreciate all the opportunities that this country offers us,” he said.
The Trump administration had briefly arrested restaurant arrests, hotels and agricultural and luxury workers after Trump said they were “good workers.” But the administration reversed itself.
Alejandro said his father is a great worker, with no criminal record. He said that his father’s first concern when they talked the day after he was arrested was finishing the work he was doing in an IHOP restaurant when the arrest occurred.
“He asked me to talk to the IHOP manager and make sure he knew he was going to assume control,” Alejandro said.
Alejandro said he still feels optimistic and knows that something will happen to help his father.
“It doesn’t make me love my country less,” he said. “It makes me love more because I see all these people defending my father, and it is, just, this country is, you know, gathering as a community, loving and helping so that this country can be better, whether landscape or only people in general.”
